Four Surprising Facts About Self Drive Cars

From Knight Rider to Bond, there have been numerous on screen cars that can drive themselves. But now reality is once again catching up with fiction and Self Drive Cars will be appearing on our streets sooner than you think. In fact, they’re already here.

 

Here are some facts about self drive cars that may surprise you:

 

1. Several cars already have features that allow them to drive themselves. Ever since automatic transmission took over gear selection in our cars, more and more cars are taking over decisions that used to belong purely to human drivers. For example, some high speed cars are limited by an onboard computer to never go over a certain speed limit.

 

Buy a 2013 Mercedes-Benz GL and you have a car that can park all by itself. The 2016 Chevrolet Malibu has a collision warning feature that applies the brakes automatically. Tesla Model S drivers can take their hands off the steering wheel on the highway, and the car can parallel park by itself. Volvo’s XC90 can even adjust the speed and the steering of your car so that you can follow the car in front of you safely at speeds of up to 35 mph.

 

In the future however, cars can be fully autonomous. While driverless cars are still mostly out of the question due to legal and insurance reasons, user-operated fully autonomous cars are already appearing over the horizon.

 

2. Many companies are working on this concept. General Motors has been working on computer-driven cars for the last 10 years, while Google has been testing its driverless cars on public roads since 2012. Tesla is working on autopilot cars, and Apple is beefing up its hiring of automotive executives. Toyota and Volvo are working on it as well.

 

And if that’s not enough, even academic institutions are into this too. Researchers at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University are working with the Florida Department of Transformation to examine the use of self drive cars.

 

3. It’s coming sooner that you think. Toyota declared that its self-driving cars will arrive by 2020. Volvo just unveiled its autonomous cars, and said that 100 of them are slated for use in Gothenburg, Sweden by 2017. Elon Musk said in an interview that he thinks Tesla will introduce autonomous cars in 3 years.

 

4. Autonomous cars offer plenty of benefits. Volvo says that even some people who like to drive prefer to let the car drive itself for some of the boring parts of their commute. In autonomous mode, the driver can watch a movie, read the newspaper, or talk on the phone. In the future, it may even drive people who are too drunk to drive themselves. Imagine how many car accidents could be prevented when intoxicated individuals no longer attempt to drive themselves home. A British study has also shown that self-drive cars could save up t0 2,500 lives from 2014 to 2030.

 

Of course, you can expect these cars to be more expensive and the laws regarding their use still needs to be clarified. But pretty soon these cars could go the way of computers and smartphones. They’ll be everywhere and later generations will wonder how we even survived without them.